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Women Teachers Help Girls Return to School

The presence of women teachers in schools in underprivileged and remote areas has encouraged girls to attend classes.

Nearly 2,200 girls who had dropped out of school “because the teachers were all men” and the fact that parents were also refusing to allow their daughters to be taught by male teachers, have now returned to school following the recruitment of female teachers, said Marzieh Gard, deputy minister of education.

“Due to the appointment of female teachers, the dropouts have gone back to school,” she said at a ceremony of the ministry’s Women Affairs Advisors Forum.

The Education Ministry “is like a large family and it is found that women are more interested in working in the education field, ISNA quoted her as saying.”

In traditional societies such as Sistan-Baluchestan and Chaharmahal -Bakhtiari provinces, parents are now allowing their daughters to attend schools with women teachers, Gard noted.

“In the past two years, we made efforts to increase the number of female students, especially in remote areas,” she said.

While literacy rate among girls is 1.2% lower than boys, gender discrimination in education had declined.

Gard emphasized the need to update female teachers through refresher and teachers training programs. “They should be on par with new information on education and communications technologies.”

As all kindergartens and schools are supervised by the ministry, “We have the means to change the views of the young generation on gender equality in a positive way,” she said.

Earlier, many teachers working in remote areas were conscripts doing mandatory military service, and therefore most of the teachers were men. But in the past couple of years, several measures were taken by the ministry to establish gender balance in teachers’ recruitment.

Education for girls is a strategic investment and benefits the community as well as society at large in terms of economic development and growth, Gard added.